1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a pharmaceutical composition for diagnosing or treating a degenerative brain disease, and a method of screening the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Degenerative brain diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, mostly cause memory and cognitive dysfunction and behavioral problems. In particular, Alzheimer's disease is a chronic disease gradually worsening over several years, which causes severe emotional distress to the patient and family, and huge medical expenses. Drugs developed so far for treatment of Alzheimer's disease temporarily relieve symptoms only, and thus, there is a high demand for fundamental treatment or progress suppression of the disease.
For example, a main target in developing a therapeutic agent for Alzheimer's disease has been neurotransmitters found in Alzheimer's disease, such as cholinergic neurons, and thus, cholinesterase inhibitors (such as Aricept, Exelon, Reminyl, or the like) are commercially available. A recently FDA-approved medication called memantine, which is a glutamate receptor antagonist, is also developed with a representative neurotransmitter glutamate as a target. However, these drugs basically cannot block the progression of the disease itself, and in recent years, there has been active research into the development of drugs targeting β-amyloid (Aβ), which forms amyloid plaques as a key component found in Alzheimer's disease, to suppress a β- or γ-secretase that are important in the generation of the β-amyloid (Aβ), or to decompose the generated β-amyloid (Aβ). However, this targeting on a normal protein present in the human body may inhibit a normal function of the protein, leading to a side effect.
Therefore, there is a demand for a prophylactic or therapeutic pharmaceutical composition targeting on new proteins associated with a variety of degenerative brain diseases, based on existing technologies.